Part IV | The Invisible Architecture of Freedom

“The true strength of a democracy is not measured when those in power happen to share our convictions. It is measured when its institutions continue to protect our freedoms long after power has changed hands.”

Every democracy eventually confronts a question that reaches far beyond a single piece of legislation. At its core, the issue is not merely how political authority should be exercised, but how it should be restrained. That distinction has shaped the evolution of constitutional government for more than two centuries. Governments are expected to address the challenges of the present; democratic institutions are expected to safeguard the future. Their enduring purpose is to ensure that fundamental freedoms never depend solely upon the judgment, priorities or goodwill of those who temporarily hold public office.

Viewed through that lens, the debate surrounding Mexico’s Audience Rights Law extends well beyond telecommunications policy. To describe it simply as a dispute over media regulation—or another episode in the country’s political polarization—is to overlook its deeper constitutional significance. What is ultimately at stake is the manner in which a democratic society protects two equally essential public goods at the same time: the public’s right to receive reliable information that is clearly distinguished from opinion, and society’s collective right to preserve a public sphere in which journalists, scientists, judges, universities and citizens remain free to question those in power without that freedom depending upon governmental discretion.

This dilemma is neither uniquely Mexican nor historically unusual. It lies at the very heart of constitutional democracy.

History has consistently demonstrated that institutions are not created to administer trust. They are created to limit the consequences of concentrated power. James Madison expressed this principle with remarkable clarity in The Federalist Papers, observing that if men were angels, government would be unnecessary—and if angels governed men, external and internal controls on government would likewise be unnecessary. More than two centuries later, that insight remains one of the defining principles of constitutional democracy. Free societies are not built upon the assumption that wise leaders will always exercise restraint. They are built upon institutions capable of preserving liberty even when restraint cannot be taken for granted.

This is why institutional design matters every bit as much as legislation itself.

When Mexico established the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) as an autonomous constitutional body in 2013, the decision represented far more than an administrative restructuring of the telecommunications sector. It reflected a constitutional choice regarding how authority should be exercised in areas directly connected to freedom of expression, market competition and public access to information. The Institute’s constitutional autonomy was never intended as a bureaucratic privilege. It was designed as an institutional safeguard that deliberately placed regulatory authority at a measurable distance from political power, thereby strengthening public confidence in decisions affecting fundamental rights.

Mexico’s current institutional framework reflects a different constitutional philosophy. The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission retains technical, operational and administrative independence, yet it no longer enjoys the constitutional autonomy that distinguished the IFT. Its governing structure directly involves both the Executive Branch and the Senate, while the President appoints the Chair of the Commission. This institutional redesign does not, by itself, establish censorship, nor does it imply that future regulatory decisions will necessarily compromise freedom of expression. What it unquestionably changes, however, is the constitutional relationship between regulatory authority and political power.

Whether that new balance ultimately strengthens or weakens democratic safeguards is precisely the question deserving careful public examination. Constitutional democracies are judged not merely by the intentions of today’s governments, but by the resilience of the institutions they leave behind for tomorrow’s.

International experience confirms that this concern is far from uniquely Mexican. One need only consider what might have happened had the Supreme Court of the United States prevented the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Public understanding of the Vietnam War would almost certainly have remained incomplete for years, while the resulting precedent might have granted future administrations broader authority to suppress investigative reporting under claims of national security. That landmark decision protected far more than two newspapers. It protected an entire society’s right to obtain the information necessary to evaluate the actions of its own government.

South Africa offers a different, though equally significant, lesson. Following the end of apartheid, democratic reconstruction required far more than free elections. It demanded institutions capable of ensuring that no authority could once again dominate the public sphere through control of information. Freedom of expression ceased to be understood merely as an individual liberty or a privilege enjoyed by journalists. It became one of the constitutional foundations upon which democratic reconciliation itself would rest.

Australia illustrates a challenge unique to the digital age. When the confrontation between the Australian government and major technology platforms demonstrated that a single private company could temporarily restrict the circulation of news for millions of citizens, it became evident that power over information no longer resides exclusively within the State. It also resides within global technology companies capable of determining which ideas receive visibility and which remain effectively absent from public debate. The democratic question is therefore no longer confined to who regulates information. It must also address who controls the infrastructure through which information reaches society.

Taken together, these examples reveal a common constitutional lesson. Democracies rarely erode because they protect too much freedom. More often, they weaken when institutions cease to provide adequate safeguards for preserving it.

For that reason, the debate over audience rights should never be reduced to a contest between political actors, nor should it depend upon the degree of confidence inspired by any particular administration. Laws outlive those who enact them. Powers created today will be exercised tomorrow by governments with different priorities, different philosophies and different political incentives. The responsible constitutional question is therefore not simply who exercises authority today, but what institutional constraints will govern those who exercise it tomorrow.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has consistently affirmed that freedom of expression possesses both an individual and a collective dimension. It protects not only the right of the speaker, but equally society’s right to receive information, confront competing ideas and participate in an open public debate. That collective dimension explains why freedom of expression is far more than an individual constitutional guarantee. It is one of the structural conditions upon which every democratic constitutional order ultimately depends.

While this debate continues in Mexico, another transformation is unfolding with extraordinary speed. Artificial intelligence and algorithmic systems are becoming the new intermediaries of knowledge. They no longer simply organize information. They increasingly determine what billions of people encounter first, what remains visible and what gradually disappears from public attention. The defining constitutional challenge of the twenty-first century therefore extends beyond preventing governmental overreach. It also requires ensuring that no concentration of power—political, technological, economic or media-related—acquires the ability to shape the boundaries of public knowledge without meaningful institutional accountability.

Perhaps that is why today’s debate will ultimately be remembered for reasons very different from those that currently dominate public discussion. Not because it confronted a government and its critics, but because it compelled a nation to ask what kind of institutions it wishes to leave to future generations. Institutions capable of protecting liberty while governments change, technologies evolve and political majorities inevitably shift.

That, ultimately, is the defining responsibility of every mature democracy.

To build institutions that protect rights not simply when those in power inspire confidence, but precisely when they no longer do.

Because democracies seldom begin to disappear the moment a single voice is silenced. They begin to fade when society no longer notices that fewer voices remain in the conversation.

Mario López Ayala, PhD

Researcher and Director of Phoenix24